The sustainable development of resource-based cities is vital to China's high-quality development. Based on the support-pressure framework, this study simplifies the city system into an economy-society subsystem (ESS) and a resource-environment subsystem (RES), and measures the economy social developmental level (ESDL) and resource environmental carrying capacity (RECC) of China's 116 resource-based cities using the improved entropy-TOPSIS model. Then, it applies the coupling coordination degree (CCD) and relative development models to explore their coupling coordination relationships and relative developmental types. The results are as follows. (1) The ESDL and RECC of China's resource-based cities have improved significantly, and there is a large divergence between cities in different regions, development stages, and dominant resource types. (2) The CCD between the ESDL and RECC of China's resource-based cities is still not ideal, and no city qualifies for the high coordination category. (3) Overall, the RECC lags behind the ESDL, and the cities with a lagging ESDL are concentrated in the western and northeastern regions. Based on these conclusions, three specific suggestions are put forth. This study may provide a scientific reference for the Chinese government to formulate a sustainable development plan for resource-based cities. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2022;18:770-783. © 2021 SETAC.
Keywords: Entropy-TOPSIS model; Resource-based cities; Subsystem coupling; Support-pressure framework; Transformation performance.
© 2021 SETAC.